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openNo Title Literature
OK, so this was a sci fi book. As I remember it, it was in the future/post-apocalyptic, and most people in the country played this MMORPG when they weren't tilling the fields or whatever. So one day this teenage boy is bored and decides to do something completely different, so he makes a character the exact opposite of the norm: a female character with high CHAR and DEX and a dump stat of (I want to say Strength?). So he ends up completing ridiculously good quests more easily, and interacting with the Game more, and then it turns out it's alive, I think? Something like that? And it definitely kills one person IRL which freaks people out because it's not supposed to be able to do that.
It had a black cover with green lettering, IIRC.
openNo Title Literature
Children's book, read originally in the 1980s.
Probably took place in NYC, and I'm thinking was like a 30s or 40s period piece.
Main character was a young Jewish girl. She had a baby brother with asthma, and this was a huge thing in the family. The little brother was in danger of dying at at least one part of the book. I don't think he ever actually died though.
There was also, I think, something about making gefilte fish.
openNo Title Literature
OK here goes, I an trying to find the name of a YA book from the 70s or 80s? not sure if part of an series or single novel.
a teenage/boy brat, who is royalty and also is a sorcerer/magician (Witch Species) and his magic less bodyguard Mind-Swap to some how escape from pursuers. (spoiler? it turns out that the mind is not really fully overwritten, as they, or at lest the bodyguard later start to have access to both minds memories)
The boy with the bodyguard's mind, slowly becomes a better person while on-the-run, survives some sort of test by the pursuers, because of his ignorance of his magic and makes friends (with a family? travelers) with some magic people - the only thing I specifically remember was a older cook (an uncle?), who learns to use his magic near iron, because of his working around iron stove, teaches the boy to use magic,
- while the bodyguard, with the he boy's mind becomes an evil mercenary or something.
Edited by PcjopenNo Title Literature
A story I read when I was little so 1998 or older. It may have been from a compilation of stories. There was a boy and a girl sitting by a river. The girl starts singing the word "Arroyo" in Spanish so the boy calls her a wetback and she gets furious at him and yells at him. A pet lizard may have also been involved in the scene.
Anyone? I asked for this one a few times with no luck.
openNo Title Literature
I'm trying to find a book I read when I was younger. It was about a chicken that got recruited or decided to go rescue a farm of battery hens. I can't remember much else, but I know she parachuted into the farm, and in the end the rescued chickens had difficulty dealing with the outside world. Oh, and at one point she has to go into a fox's den. If anyone could help that would be great, it's been bugging me for ages.
openNo Title Literature
Looking for a couple books we read in about the 4th grade. The first one was about this cockroach that turns into a boy. I think his name was shoebox, but I tried searching that and couldn't find anything. I remember that he hated spiders, cause they were always trying to kill his family. The second one is... weird, even compared to the first one. I think it was about these creatures that would punish people by moving dog poop right into their walking paths. The one thing that stands out in my mind is that someone's dog narrates part of it, and describes getting a shy bladder when his owner takes him out to go to the bathroom. These were both definitely kid's novels, and the first one was fairly old, maybe 70's or 80's. Can anyone get me some names? Thanks!
openNo Title Literature
When I was a child in the 90s, I read a book about South Africa. I believe the protags were children. I remember anti apartheid meetings and one of the friends of a protag's older sibling was hiding since he didn't have his pass book. also, oddly enough, I remember vividly that black people weren't allowed to play on the tennis courts.
openNo Title Literature
I'm looking for a book that I read years ago. It was an anthology of short-stories for young adults. One of them (the first, if I recall correctly) was about a girl who secretly raised rabbits in a secret room under her parents' bookstore, and began with the "Sex was not talked about in our place." There was also a story about a girl with a bed-wetting problem who foiled a burglary.
openNo Title Literature
OK YA novel and spoilers ahoy.
Read book in the 80s, it was probably from the 70s. Characters were a bunch of kids and a counselor. I think they were specifically hikers maybe mountain climbers, but I can't remember if they were associated with a camp otherwise.
At some point they are hiking and run into some criminals or something, and basically spend the rest of the book, either kidnapped or running away. A recurring motif is some song they keep singing: "Nobody's gonna _______ it for you, you've got to ______ it for yourself.
Long story short, and here's the spoilers...
They kill the bad guys. Violently
What is this book?
Edited by karnickelopenNo Title Literature
There's a short story I heard about second hand that no one can remember the title of. The main character was a dog who was a lieutenant in the US army and part of a project for uplifting dogs and pairing them with a human partner psychically.
The dog was Loyal as hell, and a fairly awesome fighter. The two get sent over into what may have been the gulf war, and the human partner dies... leaving the dog to defend some refugees. The dog spends the next 2 years providing and caring for the people, training them as a small armed force so that they could defend themselves (one of the refugees was a kid with budding psychic powers). One day US military come across and mistaking them for insurgents, kill one of the dog's refugees... Which prompts him to stealth his way into their base, and leave a warning on their console. A direct death threat to the commanding officer of the entire force, and a little history of just what he's up against.
openNo Title Literature
I'm looking for a book I bought and read fairly recently, within the past two years or so at least. The main character was a little girl who'd just turned 11 or 12, had an older sister who she and everyone else considers much cooler than her, and was obsessed with fairies. She lived in a world where magic was an accepted reality, but fairies and elves lived in another world. But then a pixie showed up in the 'fairy box' she kept in her tree house and gave her a magic necklace and dragged her off to fairy world to help save them from the winter queen. However, it turned out that the pixie had been sent to get her sister, not her. Everyone's disappointed, but now it's too late and they're stuck with her. Then the magic necklace turns her into a pixie, because a human kinda sticks out in fairy land. I remember lots more, but if that's not enough to get a title from someone I don't think more would help.
openNo Title Literature
There was a book I read years ago. I don't remember a lot of the plot, unfortunately, but some of the characters really stick out, like an acid spitting snake-thing named You. Anyway, Plot I do remember is that a boy gets zapped off to another world by a z-shaped lightning bolt, and ends up being the hero that overthrows the Empire. He ends up getting magic powers that let him talk to the local animals, like the aforementioned snake-thing. Does any of this ring any bells for anybody? It's been driving me crazy for years...
openNo Title Literature
I vaguely remember this young adult horror anthology whose name now escapes me. The only story title I can remember is "Here There Be Tygers" by Stephen King, but it also contained a story in which two kids bake a carrot cake during day-light savings time, then lose the cake when they "fall back" an hour; and a story with an unsettling vampire child who did not speak his first word until age five.
openNo Title Literature
Okay, I'm looking for a novel that I read in 2008 or 2009. It's YA, written diary-style, about a really smart, nerdy girl who doesn't have a lot of friends and dies in the end (she's killed). The title is is something like, "The Short Life of [first-name last-name]" or "The Early Ending of [first-name last-name]". It's from the US. One more detail that I remember is that the girl daydreams a lot, and then she just writes REVERIE in big squares in her diary. She may or may not have been named Alice or Meredith (wait... I think it was something with an M).
openNo Title Literature
Okay, I'm looking for a novel that I read in 2008 or 2009. It's YA, written diary-style, about a really smart, nerdy girl who doesn't have a lot of friends and dies in the end (she's killed). The title is is something like, "The Short Life of [first-name last-name]" or "The Early Ending of [first-name last-name]". It's from the US. One more detail that I remember is that the girl daydreams a lot, and then she just writes REVERIE in big squares in her diary. She may or may not have been named Alice or Meredith (wait... I think it was something with an M).
openNo Title Literature
I've been trying to remember two children's illustrated chapter books; I believe they were by the same author/illustrator. They were both in a "animals dressed in Edwardian garb style"; but definitely not "The Wind in the Willows".
In the one I have a better memory of, it's Christmas, and all the animals (I believe that it was a mix of woodland animals, but I know at least some of them were mice; perhaps all of them?) were gathered in a mansion, possibly inside one big tree. Two small children were going to put on a pageant, and so go exploring for props, and find a whole secret attic that nobody knows about.
The second one, someone's uncle gets kidnapped. There is a scene with a train, and possibly a hot air balloon.
openNo Title Literature
I read this book several years ago, and after a few months forgot all about it until recently. Now I'm wracking my brains, trying to figure out what the book was called. It was youth fiction, and I think it wasn't published before the 90s. It wasn't very long - it was probably under 200 pages.
The setting was a Past Right Now community in the United States that had been deliberately re-created by a group of people - I'm not sure who, but I believe it was the government, though it may have been some large company. The time period in which the community was living was somewhere around the late 18th century or early-to-mid 19th century, while the real time period was in the 90s or 2000s. I also seem to recall that the creation of this community may have had something to do with health or medical reasons, although the community was fairly small. For some reason that I can't remember, there were also cameras and viewing windows hidden in different places all over the town, such as in the shops. I think that while the children in this community didn't know that it was a re-creation, their parents did, but intentionally kept it a secret from them. The main character was a girl in her early teens. She might have had a brother, or a friend who was a boy. I don't recall what her parents did for a living, but at some point in the book, the girl's mother tells her about the outside world.
Around the same time that she learns about this from her mother - or maybe some time before - the town in which the girl lives begins to experience unrest and disagreements related to the fact that they're being kept in this community and aren't supposed to let the younger generation know that it's a re-creation of life several hundred years ago. The girl ends up running away from the community and escapes from it. During her escape, I think she runs through a forest at night, and somehow winds up looking through the aforementioned viewing windows at someone she knows working in their shop. After she escapes from the general area of the community, I distinctly recall that she uses a telephone (I believe it's a pay telephone) to call someone. Near the end of the book, citizens of a town near the community hold a protest on the steps of the town hall and the girl is interviewed by a reporter.
It would be great if someone could find out what this book is called - it's been bothering me for a while now. I'd really like to locate it and re-read it, and also add an example for it under Past Right Now, since that page was what sparked my memory of the book in the first place.
openNo Title Literature
A children's novel about a boy and his imaginary friend. The imaginary friend is real and just can't be seen by anyone else, or at least the book is written as though that's true. The imaginary friend is humanoid, and I kind of remember the cover depicting him as bright orange, and the other illustrations also showing him as being roughly child-sized. He's named Oddity, and there was a scene where the imaginary friend made a mess, and when the kid explains that his imaginary friend did it all, his mother's reaction is "oh, did he?" - this either caused a Who's on First? moment or actually was the basis for the imaginary friend's name; I just remember thinking "oddity" was pronounced "oh diddy" because of this book.
Edited by MikeKopenNo Title Literature
I read something in a textbook about the Holocaust; it was from the viewpoint of a woman, i think, who met her future husband after she was rescued. It wasn't Gerda Weissman Klein, though, because i think the guy had also been in the camps. I remember very vividly a scene where he wanted to eat some cherries out of a bowl but was refused because it could kill him.

Hi! I'm looking for a graphic novel I read in the 1990's. I read it in Dutch, but chances are it was a translation.
The atmosphere was a lot like a Jules Verne novel. An eccentric professor (a dog) and his assistant (also a dog?) are members of a gentlemen's club. The professor rides a unicycle. They're ridiculed at their club, and they decide to go investigate a large cave. Inside the cave, they meet a madwoman in a giant mecha who rants about life and death. The heroes tell her that it's birth and death that are opposites, which sends her into an emotional breakdown.
Gorgeous art if I remember correctly, and most of the story takes place inside that cave. The book I read was hardcover and size A4.
Edited by Solle